The House of Representatives passed an energy bill on Thursday that would wrest control of a permit for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline away from President Barack Obama, who has put the project on hold.

The bill, part of a broader House Republican effort to fund highways and infrastructure projects, would also expand offshore oil drilling and open up parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

The House of Representatives passed an energy bill on Thursday that would wrest control of a permit for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline away from President Barack Obama, who has put the project on hold.

The bill, part of a broader House Republican effort to fund highways and infrastructure projects, would also expand offshore oil drilling and open up parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

A plan to fast-track the stalled Keystone XL oil pipeline was passed by a key committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as Republicans made yet another attempt to spur approval of the project that has become a major issue in the 2012 elections.

The bill would wrest decision-making on the pipeline from the Obama administration and hand it to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which would be compelled to issue approval permits quickly on the Canada-to-Texas project.

A group of 44 senators, all but one Republican, have signed on to proposed legislation that would authorize the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline despite the refusal of President Barack Obama to advance the project.

Republican Senator John Hoeven is set to introduce the bill on Monday that, if passed into law, would allow work to begin immediately on all but the sensitive Nebraska portion of TransCanada's $7 billion controversial project.

After a grueling week in which their internal dissension was aired on television, the five members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission face an even bigger hurdle - figuring out how to work together.

A protracted struggle could mean gridlock as the agency deals with a sweeping set of reforms to fix regulatory gaps meant to keep the nation's nuclear plants safe.

A top Republican congressional watchdog wants the Energy Department to turn over documents and emails about $4.7 billion in loan guarantees for four solar projects approved right before a Sept 30 deadline.

The last-minute approvals of the projects raise fears that "the evaluation of loan guarantees may have been rushed in order to meet a deadline," said Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The earthquake that shook the East Coast last week rattled casks holding radioactive nuclear waste at a Virginia plant, moving them as much as 4.5 inches from their original position, the plant's operator said.

The 5.8-magnitude quake shifted 25 casks, each 16 feet tall and weighing 115 tons, on a concrete pad at Dominion Resources Inc's North Anna nuclear plant.

"There was no damage to the casks and no damage to the fuel," Dominion spokesman Rick Zuercher said.

"They were designed to withstand earthquakes."

The chairman of the U.S. nuclear regulator said his own commission is hamstrung by an inefficient, "flawed voting system" which distracts from its job of ensuring safety at the country's power plants.

Gregory Jaczko chided his colleagues on the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission for their approach to recommended changes in the wake of Japan's nuclear disaster -- an approach he said reflects "the current commission's preoccupation with process at the expense of nuclear safety policy."

The U.S. government should start using the $25 billion it has collected for dealing with nuclear waste for its intended use rather than hoarding it to reduce the deficit, a bipartisan panel said on Friday.

The Nuclear Waste Fund is currently used to "reduce the apparent deficit," the report said. It acknowledged that freeing up the money would be politically difficult.

President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders face an August 2 deadline to reach an agreement to raise the U.S. borrowing limit and cut spending.

A U.S. task force examining the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant expects to find ways to improve safety at the country's 104 U.S. nuclear plants but has not found any major problems in its first 30 days of work.

"To date, the task force has not identified any issues that undermine our confidence in the continued safety and emergency planning of U.S.